Sometimes if you can get someone on the hook you can keep extracting money from them. "You need to pay us for storage." "Oh sorry we forgot to mention, you need to pay the customs agent." "We need to cover our gas expenses."
So they may have actually dumped the goods but seeing if they could get any more out of the mark.
But Tristan never got paid anything, and came right out and told the person he was a scammer before telling him exactly where to find his freight and never tried to extract any money from the victim.
So either he's a scammer with a heart of gold and didn't want a bunch of chocolate to go to waste, or he's in on it somehow with the storage facilities.
He paid $2000 but doesn’t seem enough to make the scam worthwhile. Maybe the “happy path” is a multimillion cargo and a disinterest conglomerate that will just claim on insurance. Having a low value cargo and a very interested one man band is not worth the risk of getting caught.
So they may have actually dumped the goods but seeing if they could get any more out of the mark.